Tom Carradine - By the Beautiful Sea

A U.S. import for the mid-afternoon - and today's seaside theme goes transatlantic.

"By the Beautiful Sea" - music by Harry Carroll, lyrics by Harold R. Atteridge, published in 1914 - was composed on the terrace of Reisenweber's Brighton Beach Casino, which feels entirely appropriate. It topped the American charts for six weeks that summer, originally recorded by the Heidelberg Quintet - right at the moment war was breaking out in Europe. Sheet music published by Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., it crossed the Atlantic at just the right moment, bringing that ragtime sound onto the British halls.

The seaside, it turns out, is a universal language.